Category: Writer Interviews

Shane is one of the more unique authors I have interviewed. His medium for storytelling is music. He published his story as strictly an audiobook available for download at his Bandcamp page. I wanted to pick his brain and find out his process for that.

What inspires your writing?

My first book, “The Pulse Runs Through Us and The Weave is a Pulse,” was inspired very much by a fantasy world that I had created which is linked to some tabletop role playing games I played with my friends, and also overlaps the persona I take on in two of my musical projects, Sombre Arcane and Phranick. In a greater sense, I am greatly inspired by the fantasy novels of my youth – specifically those written in the Forgotten Realms by Elaine Cunningham, R.A. Salvatore and Ed Greenwood and a love for the history of our world. I have dabbled in other types of creative writing, specifically Cyberpunk, which is mostly inspired by Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk 2020 game, William Gibson, and my day job as an IT Sysadmin/Security Consultant.

What is your process of developing characters

Most of my characters start as either a creative analog to someone, or a “kind” of person that I know or have met and then I begin fleshing them out from there. I may have a personality in mind and I try and ensure there is at least one contradiction (i.e. kind and greedy) so that even if I’m short-handing a character, they have some depth. If I’m seeing that my characters have started to become similar, and especially if myself or an editor is getting confused who is who in the dialogue or narrative, I’ll sometimes use a tabletop RPG random personality generator, where you roll funny shaped dice to get random results haha. This usually leads to me cherry-picking certain characteristics I would like them to have and letting the dice suggest complications.

As a rule of thumb, if think that a character is going to take up more than a single scene I’ll pop over to another document and start writing a short paragraph about that character that is not tied to the story. It might be a small paragraph about what they did the day previously, or leading up to their scene in the book. Sometimes it is an entire page or two of copy about their upbringing, etc. It’s not always proportional to the character’s importance to the story, but usually it’s at least close. There are some characters I wrote two pages about that only had a single line – or none. I’ll occasionally delete it when I’m finished, because I feel generally oppressed by writing characters into rigid patterns of behavior. Mostly because people don’t work that way, but also because the copy just gets to be too much and when I update the character in the main story I feel compelled to do the (unproductive…) work of going back and updating the other document. If it’s going to be a recurring character or a main character, I’ll commit to that work though because it is very helpful.

Did you Start with a story outline or did you make it up as you went along?

In the case of this first book, there are 7 chapters and they do not make up a contiguous “story” as such. They are random collections of poetry that a character may have written, or a short story about a particular performance of a song, or a chapter could be an entire short story in itself. The entire book has a musical companion piece for each chapter. There is a chapter near the beginning however that does have a relatively traditional short story, and for that I most certainly worked from an outline. I didn’t have the outline finished before I started, and adjusted the outline quite a bit as I went along and wanted to change pacing, and came up with new characters I wanted to give more time to. I thought the outline would give me an idea how long the story would be, but there ended up being a HUGE disparity between what my outline suggested for plot points and the amount of copy that I ended up with – what was an outline intended for 20 pages turned into about 130 pages! This is one of the biggest takeaways I have from writing this first book – how much actual copy it takes to explain an outline point without just…saying what happens.

How much research did you need for your story?

Because it is a fantasy story, most of my primary research has been done through my 25 years of tabletop gaming and reading fantasy. This wasn’t an accident – I wanted writing this to be fast, and fun, since it was my first book. However, in an effort to properly portray a character with a lot of medieval warfare research, I did a (quite disproportionate, if I’m being honest) amount of research into medieval warfare tactics.

What researching methods did you use?

I have a book about Irish castles that outlined quite a bit of how they were built, and what they were built to defend against. Additionally I did some YouTube crawling, finding both high-level breakdowns on pre-gunpowder battle tactics and also watched some extremely dry research from historians who were explaining the details of medieval combat through a translation of primary sources such as combat manuals in the middle ages. I wanted to be certain that my high-level descriptions were looking right. In the end, I only used a fraction of what I discovered, of course haha

What were some of your methods for handling worldbuilding?

Because I operate in the fantasy genre, worldbuilding can be pretty fast and loose. Giving the reader only the information they need to know to push the plot forward saved a lot the time I could spend on worldbuilding on the giving depth to the characters instead. That said, because of the nature of the project and how it is tied to lore that exists in a personal tabletop RPG game I run and the band, which has it’s own lore, a lot of the work was really already done for me.

Did you draw on personal experience?

Definitely. As with most early authors, anyone who knows me will definitely see parts of me and my life sprinkled throughout the book. For example, as part of our musical project, we throw a 3-day festival called the Northeast Dungeon Siege. The largest chapter, “Requirem for an Empty Castle” is a loose allegory to the effort, work, and tribulations it took to pull off such a large event.

How did your publish?

I self-published 125 books late last year (2019), using 48HourBooks.com who I absolutely cannot recommend enough. Go to their site, sign up for the “book on how to publish a book” and it walks you through every step of the process. Fortunately my solo musical project is on a label that helps fulfill orders and I’m able to hawk most of them at live shows. They have gone quite quickly, and I’m probably going to have to get to fixing a bunch of small errors and get ready to print a second pressing in the next few months.

Why did you do it that way?

DIY is all I have ever known when it comes to creative commerce. I’m open to other methods of publishing as I write more, but I grew up selling tapes I dubbed at home in High School and this is just a natural extension of the indie punk rock and hip hop scenes I come from. There’s also a very hearty DIY indie spirit in the modern tabletop community so it also seemed natural for those reasons.

How long did it take to land representation?

KEEP IT REAAAAAAAAAAAAAL
REPRESENT WHAT?

I represent myself. I don’t see this changing anytime soon. 🙂 But I would work with anyone who thinks they can do more for me than I can do for myself.

Who did your cover and marketing?

The cover was done on commission by a local artist Aaron White. The first chapter in the book is a short story inspired by the image after I received it. I’m so happy to have had him on board and everyone should check out what he does. While my cover is quite fantastical, anyone who is a fan of surrealistic horror will really enjoy his work too.

I’m almost sold out of the book already so it sufficed for the marketing to be limited to direct sales to fans of my other artistic output. My “dungeon synth” projects Sombre Arcane and Phranick are well recognized in Facebook groups dedicated to the genre, and to a limited extent I was able to market a few sales through fans of my hip hop project as well and a lot of old friends who were simply tickled that I had spent the effort to write a book. I would be interested in marketing the next edition to a wider audience but don’t honestly have the first idea how to go about that short of spending time I would rather spend creating becoming a part of new facebook groups haha

What are some of the methods you have used to generate interest in your book?

Again, I’m very lucky that there was a built-in interest in the book based on other things that my bandmate and I already spend a good deal of time marketing.

Did you use beta readers? How did you secure them?

Not as many as I would have liked to, but my bandmate had a vested interest and for some reason seems to like what I do, so he read it and gave me some wonderful feedback. I enlisted, early on, the help of a good friend who has a good attention to detail to help with editing the book. In retrospect, I should have reached out to more friends for this – and fortunately now that I’ve got this one finished people are offering to read the next one ahead of time…you better believe I have a running list of people who’ve said they’ll do it next time around!

What was your process in integrating music into the creation of your book?

In most cases, the music existed first and then I wrote a story or poem that was inspired by it’s textures. A few were done in reverse order but I’ve found this to be the easiest way.

How many revisions did it take to get a publishable book?

It’s hard to answer that because I revised everything quite a bit as I went along. Some chapters were written very swiftly, but the most complicated story probably had 2 thorough revisions after it was complete. This doesn’t count many occasions of just mass-deleting an entire chapter because I was having a bad night.

What aspect of the book writing process did you find the most challenging?

Finding each character’s “own voice” was a big challenge. Since my story is very largely character-driven, as opposed to action-driven, I had to rely on some extreme tricks to ensure that each character didn’t turn into my own personal wording and voice. One of my favorite tricks is something I call “Sentence Mapping” – which I use for a particularly long and dense scene of dialogue. I’ll open Excel (or google sheets if that’s your jam) and make a column for every character. Then I’ll copy/paste every sentence that character says in their column, one person talking per row of the spreadsheet. Then, I’ll read straight down the column and make sure that people aren’t shifting too swiftly from one conversational tone in a single sentence. Truth be told, I adopted this tactic way late and can see on subsequent reads some places I should have used it and didn’t. Oh well, next time.

What are you writing now?

Right now I’m in the preliminary process of working on a similar fantasy book that will be a companion for my Dungeon Synth project Sombre Arcane’s first release. It will be bigger, and better, now that I’ve learned all the things I learned in the process of creating this book. I haven’t started the outlining process proper, but I have several chapters, scenes and characters in mind and a few even outlined briefly in files called “unnamed document” in my quite chaotic Google Drive. 🙂 I’ve also taken a stab at a Cyberpunk short story about a Netrunner (think “3d virtual reality hacker…part tech-nerd, part social engineer”) who hacks into insurance companies to give people free healthcare for fun. I deleted what I had though, but I know I’ll get back to the concept. As a musician the idea of just doing something over and over and over and throwing away what you did to maybe just do it a LITTLE better next time is sort of built into my process.

What is your advice to other writers?

Stop waiting and write. Do it wrong. Making a shitty book is more fulfilling than not making a book because you know it will be shitty. Don’t be afraid to come out of what you’re writing to take on other, seemingly barely related tasks. Writing what seems like an unrelated story is still practice at the process of writing, after all. Honor your original intentions, but don’t let that be a prison – delete stuff and re-write if it’s not hitting right. Read about how other people engage in the writing process, and steal the ideas they have that you like. From a more mechanical standpoint – show, don’t tell and make sure your characters have their own voices as best you can, it’ll help the reader develop a connection with them just by being able to intuitively separate them from their counterparts. Above all please remember: with very few exceptions anyone can write a book. Anyone can publish a book. At it’s core it takes exactly 3 things, some hours spent making the content, the money to pay the people who put it together (printer, graphic designer, editor), and the guts to do those first two things.

Be Sure to Check Shane’s story, along with his other work out at his official page, https://phranick.bandcamp.com.

Tara is yet another talented author that responded to my call for authors to interview. Be sure to visit her website: taraingham.com

What inspires your writing?

I find inspiration in a lot of things. Sometimes it starts as a daydream, or an actual dream. Sometimes I just have a sentence in my head and the story grows from there. In the case of my Once I series, it started with my frustration that so often characters will be ‘shy’, but that personality trait will vanish within a matter of chapters. So, I wanted to write a character who was shy/socially awkward and remained that way.

In the greater scheme I’d say I’m inspired by everything and anything. Someone can say something and it’ll give me an idea for a scene, my pets will be playing and inspire a character, I’ll see a picture and it will inspire the setting. There is no single thing that creates inspiration, it is simply the world around me, and can come in any form, at any moment.

What is your process of developing characters?

I develop different characters in different ways, depending on who they are, their importance in the book etc. I’m not sure if you’d have heard of 2D and 3D characters before, but the basic idea is a 2D character is a background character, an extra. They might say a few lines, interact with your main characters from time to time, but all in all they’re unimportant, so their development is only done on a surface level – what do they look like? Do they have specific vocal trends? Where do they reside? You don’t know anything more about their background and family than what is visible immediately. For these, I usually create them as I need them, and keep a rough record of where they are in case I need them again, but little more.

A 3D character is a primary character. Not necessarily a main, but present, important to a degree. These are the characters that are developed, the ones with pasts and personalities, the ones who have nightmares because when they were ten years old they saw an old man hit by a car. These are the characters who are real. For my 3D characters I will mostly know the 2D details about them from the start and build out from there. For my main characters in particular, I will either figure out what they look like or what they do for work, and then go, ‘okay, so this is your basics, this is the story, this is what needs to happen in the story, so who are you? What made you this way? Why?’

I ask the questions to figure out the bones of their past, but they still surprise me sometimes, and usually grow to be more solid the longer they’re present in the story. That’s how you really learn the details of a person, by things they say, memories they bring up. Sometimes, even as the writer, you don’t know things about your characters until you write it, maybe two or three books into a series, but the moment you do, you know it’s right. You know that this thing you didn’t realize about them is indelibly a part of who they are.

Then of course, there’s the actual ‘character development’ that occurs in the course of the story. For that I usually do a bit of research. If a character goes through a trauma I’ll look at the different ways people react to certain traumas, what the recovery process is, stuff like that, but I also consider my individual characters and who they are as people, whether they’re easily affected by certain things, how easily influenced they are. I think a lot of successfully developing your characters in a reactive sense is understanding people and how different personalities tick. People watching can be great for figuring that out.

Did you Start with a story outline or did you make it up as you went along?

I am a notorious pantser! Every story I have ever written has had the barest of bare bones planning to begin with. Hell, the first trilogy I ever wrote (unpublished) started from a single sentence playing through my mind. So I usually start with nothing, or near to, and make it up on the fly, but if I’m writing a series I usually have a pretty good idea of the plot by book 2, and not just for the second book, but the entire series. That’s when I actually start outlining and figuring out key scenes.

That being said, I write in sequence, so, start to finish. That’s not how all writers work, so for me I can do that. I’m able to let the story develop as it wants to because I haven’t written the ending yet, so I have a lot more flexibility to change the plot and themes as I go than someone who outlines the entire story from the get-go.

How much research did you need for your story?

It’s hard to say, really. I don’t tend to do my research before I start, I do it on an as-need basis. But given my Once I books are set in a mostly urban, real-world setting, I didn’t have to do too much beyond the foundations. I created my revenants (the primary species in my novel) entirely based on the role I wanted them to play, so beyond researching to confirm the word ‘revenant’ actually fit what I was making, that was all the research I really did for that. Otherwise it was little things here and there: What kind of car do police drive in this city? What does the inside of a morgue look like? What’s the difference between a druid and a magician? Street map of XYZ town? Nothing too in depth. There is a degree of freedom in working within a world you know and understand.

All that being said, for my current work in progress, I am having to research everything! I’ve moved into a medieval setting for my new series, and as such there’s all sorts of ancient technologies I don’t understand, and all sorts of things I never considered, like the practicality of torches Vs candles. Stuff like that. 

What researching methods did you use?

I am a google nut. I google everything, cross check my sources with other sources and take as many notes and screen grabs as I can. When I can’t find what I need on the internet (yes, that does happen) I hit up the local library, or check the handful of guides and encyclopedias I have at home. And if all else fails, I either look for experts to ask, ask other writers, or I just make it up.

What were some of your methods for handling worldbuilding?

World building is HARD. No two ways about it. It is a difficult process, a raging headache and a pain in the butt. When I’m working in an urban setting it’s easier because I can refer to real world maps, or google real world examples of settings, real world cultures and languages. It certainly makes it less daunting. But when I’m working in a ‘fantasy’ setting, that’s when things get tricky. The first thing I usually do is sit down and draw a rough map, that way I can figure out where I am. I’ll usually just sketch a random shape, put in some boundaries, close my eyes and jab at a random spot, and that’s where my story starts. From there, I’ll give each realm etc. a name that I pull out of thin air that sort of sounds like it matches the rest. After that, it’s a case of figuring out the needs the story has for the setting. So I consider what the people are like, what their culture is like and create an urban structure that reflects that (barbarians in caves, monarchs in stone castles, warrior clans in small clay huts etc.). I take a bit of time to figure out which borders are friendly, which are hostile, how much of the world my characters know about and have interacted with.

These sort of things determine how much I develop realms/kingdoms etc. outside of my primary setting.

I also consider languages and whether they all speak a single language or if there are multiple spoken, whether I need to actually create these languages (which is another raging headache), or whether I can just glaze over them.

Another thing I try to figure out is how this world came to be, and what their beliefs and legends around this are. Oftentimes the history of the world determines the theology – religious beliefs – and so it’s pretty important to understand in terms of determining your characters’ morals etc.

Did you draw on personal experience?

I try not to rely too heavily on my personal experience, but for some things, yes, I did and do. For example, my main character in my Once I series has anxiety, is socially awkward, and that is something I know very well. That is my life experience. I am an awkward person, an introvert, generally uncomfortable, so it was easier to write those traits in her if I considered my experience with them. Outside of that, writing fantasy does make drawing on personal experience a bit tricky at times, especially when your characters interpersonal relationships and personal experiences are so vastly different from your own.

How did your publish?

In this instance I accepted a contribution based contract with a publishing house (not quite self-publishing, not quite traditional either).

Why did you do it that way?

I chose to go the route of a contribution based contract purely because I am way too busy to self publish. There’s a lot of running around involved in getting a book ready to publish.

I’m currently looking for an agent for my new series, so if that pans out my next series should be traditionally published.  

How long did it take to land representation?

That depends on if we’re talking from the early days of my first series or just for my Once I series. From my earliest attempts at being published, I’d say about 5-6 years, from the time I started looking at the Once I series being published, around 6 months to a year. I wasn’t in any particular rush, and being a contribution based situation it didn’t take as long as it could have.

I’ve only just started looking for reps for my new series this month, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes actively looking for a traditional publisher.

Who did your cover and marketing?

My cover was created by my publisher, so I’m not exactly sure of the name of the person who did it.

As for marketing, my publisher does some, they provide my marketing materials and share news about my book, but I also do a lot myself.

What are some of the methods you have used to generate interest in your book?

I have a couple of social media pages and I have my website, so in terms of passively generating interest, I’ve found those useful, especially since I offer free shorts not included in my books on my website. Outside of that, I had a book launch, contact a few local papers and let them know I was publishing, I’m in contact with my local libraries and they invite me to attend events from time to time.

The method I’ve found to be most useful, however, is actually attending conventions and writers events. These sort of things put you in contact with people who would never likely have a way to hear of you or your work, and gives them the opportunity to actually buy your books on the day. So a lot of my readers have come from events like that, and because they read and enjoy the books, they tell people about them, and so on so forth.

Did you use beta readers? How did you secure them?

I have a couple of friends who I have beta read for me. I know a lot of people don’t think having your friends beta read is a good idea, but in this instance my friends are avid readers and brutally honest in their feedback, so I can trust them pretty well.

What was the process you used to develop your magic system and how your characters use it?

I basically set out a set of rules for how magic is generated and the things it can do. I also set out a pretty strict set of rules for how it can’t be used.

It’s very easy to just shout ‘magic’ when you’re struggling to come up with a solution, which is why limitations are important. Also, it would be pretty ridiculous if your characters seemed to have limitless abilities and then turned around with ‘oh no, whatever will we do’ for something the examples of magic seem to have been created to solve, so yeah. I set up rules about what can and can’t be done, the reason certain people might have magic while others don’t, and how it affects the person and whether it can be detected.

How many revisions did it take to get a publishable book?

I usually do about 5-7 revisions and edits myself before sending it to my beta readers, then another 2 or 3 after I get it back from them. After that I’m usually comfortable submitting and the editors usually go through another 2 or 3 sets of revisions before we’re all happy to go ahead.

It can be hard to give the go ahead, though, because there’s always going be something missed, something you’re not entirely happy with, but it’s one of those things where you need to be willing to let go eventually.

What aspect of the book writing process did you find the most challenging?

It’s somewhere between the editing and accepting feedback. I don’t know, like, writing is hard, don’t get me wrong, but enjoyable. Editing, well it can be tedious, especially when you’ve read your book a dozen times and just want to look at something new, but then, I prefer that to seeing the harsher things some people have to say. There’s always the ones where you just roll your eyes because their ‘feedback’ demonstrates quite clearly that they haven’t actually read it, but the ones where they pick out certain things, especially when they’re things you’re already uneasy about, they’re hard. It takes the edge off a bit when they behave constructively, balance criticism with encouragement, but the ones who just spit acid and seem to give ‘feedback’ simply because they want to beat you down, that can be hard to swallow.

What are you writing now?

Well, the third novel in the Once I series is currently in production and coming out in 202, but my current WIP is a sword and sorcery style high fantasy. I’m not really willing to share too much at this point, but it’s going to be 5 books, bring across inspiration from one specific character in my Once I series (yes, all of my stories are linked in some way or another, even when they’re on different planets), and it is an entirely different tone to Once I.

What is your advice to other writers?

Keep on writing! It can be really bloody hard, the learning, the criticism, the whole bit, You’ll lose confidence in yourself, then gain in back, think your work is the best then the worst. Remember, none of that actually matters. If you write for the love of telling the story, that’s what matters.

Something I always tell people when they say they want to be a writer is simply this: It is the duty of the writer to take reality and translate it into a context that everyone can understand.

So keep on taking reality and translating it for the world to read.

I often put out calls for authors to promote themselves by letting me interview them for my blog. Erin Swan was one of the first to respond. Check her out.

What inspires your writing?

I get inspiration for my stories from many places, including books, movies, video games, and even my own life. But the inspiration to actually write? I think that comes from the need to see my stories told. I’m not satisfied to just let them turn over and over in my own mind. I need to put them down. I need to see it actually come together, and see the characters come to life.

What is your process of developing characters?

I frequently start off with only a very basic idea of who my characters are. I know their names, the thing that drives them the most, but aside from those basic details, I don’t really get to know my characters until I’m deep into writing. Most of my characters develop as the story moves along. Their internal struggles and personal journeys are just as vital to the story as the movement of the plot and any external struggles they may face.

Did you Start with a story outline or did you make it up as you went along?

I usually have a very basic idea of where I want my story to go, but I’m not much of a plotter. I like to let the story flow in whatever way feels best as I’m writing.

How much research did you need for your story?

I don’t feel that I needed an excessive amount of research for Bright Star. I wrote in a world of my own creation, so I didn’t need to get into extremely in-depth research sessions for historical accuracy or anything of that sort. Most of my researching was focused on battle strategy, medieval-type transportation, and Latin translations of words and phrases for names and such.

What researching methods did you use?

Google is my best friend, and my go-to for research.

What were some of your methods for handling worldbuilding?

I view my world as a character and, in the same way other characters do, I start with only a basic idea of what this world is like. As I write, it begins to flesh itself out. Characters travel to new regions, and those areas come to life. Discussions of history or politics crop up in the story, and those things begin to fill themselves in for me. Questions regarding magic are asked, and I begin to figure out the intricacies of the various magic systems. Over time, the world simply becomes a fleshed-out character as the other characters explore it.

Did you draw on personal experience?

Bright Star is a very personal story for me. When I wrote it, I was extremely reserved, uncertain of who I was and my place in the world, and constantly doubting my own worth. This is the same place that Andra is in for the beginning of the story. I wanted to write a story about a character who was going on this journey of self-discovery just as I was in my personal life. As I discovered my inner voice, Andra found hers. As I began to believe in my own strength and abilities, so did she. In many ways, Andra’s journey was mine. You know, just without the dragons.

How did you publish?

I published traditionally, with Tor Teen.

Why did you do it that way?

I didn’t feel confident in my ability to publish and market a book myself, and I am an extremely cautious person, especially when it comes to finances, so the idea of having to invest a decent amount upfront to self-publish made me a bit nervous. Traditional just always felt like the better path for me.

How long did it take to land representation?

I never actively sought representation. Bright Star was posted online for many years before being discovered by the team from Inkitt. They contacted me and asked to represent me and help me to get published. So, I suppose in some ways you could say it took years to get representation, while in terms of actively seeking representation, it took no time at all!

Who did your cover and marketing?

My cover (which I am completely in love with and obsessed with) was designed by Larry Rostant. He’s an incredible artist that was contracted for the work by my publisher, Tor Teen. They also did a great deal of marketing for me, and Inkitt pitched in a bit too. Of course, I still try to do as much marketing as I can personally.

What are some of the methods you have used to generate interest in your book?

Personally, my efforts are mostly limited to social media. I’ve also distributed bookmarks to bookstores and libraries in my area, and booked speaking engagements at schools to try to generate interest. 

Did you use beta readers? How did you secure them?

Bright Star was initially posted on FictionPress and then on Inkitt, so I suppose you could say that I had thousands of beta readers! I loved getting feedback from a large online audience, and grew a great deal from that. I’ve also utilized a few fellow writers as beta readers, but have never hired professional beta readers.

How did you keep your tone appropriate for YA audiences without making your story too “Adult” or mature for them?

I actually went through a great deal of editing that was focused on this. My editor felt that there were several themes and subplots that were too adult for a YA audience. I really had to take some time to put myself into the mindset of a high school-aged reader, and determine just how much grittiness was appropriate, and how dark was too dark. 

How many revisions did it take to get a publishable book?

I’m constantly editing as I write for minor errors. But in terms of large revisions, I believe I went through four rounds of editing and rewrites, most of which was focused on cutting down unnecessary content.

What aspect of the book writing process did you find the most challenging?

The actual writing process has always been fun for me. I don’t really struggle with any part of that, aside from actually making the time to sit down and do it. It’s editing that I struggle with. When it comes to Bright Star, having to cut so much content was definitely a struggle. The original version was about twice the length of the published version, and removing entire plots and scenes that I loved was really difficult.

What are you writing now?

I’ve just finished the first draft of a YA fantasy called Four and Twenty Blackbirds. I’m working on the first round of edits now, and I’m hoping it will be my next published book.

What is your advice to other writers?

Don’t stop writing. You don’t have to write every day, but don’t let it become something that you used to do. I stopped writing for years after graduating college. I just felt like it wasn’t important anymore. It took my husband pushing me after we first got married to rediscover my love for writing, and now I just look back at all that wasted time, thinking about everything I could have written and how much I could have grown in that time as a writer. I would hate for any other writer to have learn that lesson the hard way like I did–or worse, simply never get back to something that they loved so much. So, my advice is to remember why you started writing in the first place. It’s like a relationship: Sometimes you have to rediscover why you fell in love, but it can be done. Your relationship with your writing is not a love that you should ever give up on.

Check out Erin’s Books at this link.